A slew of recent layoffs at John Deere plants in Iowa and Illinois appear to provide President Joe Biden with a perfect opportunity to speak out against the kind of corporate greed that is devastating America’s working class and widening inequality.

But Biden has so far remained silent on the mass layoffs, which have affected about a thousand workers and raised fears among those not affected that they could be next.

Deere & Company is the latest U.S. company to announce significant layoffs after raking in huge profits and spending billions on stock buybacks — which researchers have linked to job losses — as well as dividend payouts to wealthy shareholders and lavish CEO pay.

“Here we go again,” said Les Leopold, executive director of the Labor Institute Common dreams. “Share buybacks and mass layoffs, massive layoffs and share buybacks. Tens of thousands of workers are losing their jobs in thousands of companies just because CEOs and their major shareholders want to make a quick killing by artificially boosting the price of their shares. We should always call stock buybacks for what they really are: blatant stock manipulation.”

“Today, 70% of all corporate profits are used for stock buybacks, up from 2% in 1982,” Leopold added. “They should be banned.”

If The guardMichael Sainato reported last week that John Deere “posted profits of more than $10 billion in fiscal 2023 and CEO John May received total compensation of $26.7 million.”

“John Deere spent more than $7.2 billion on share buybacks in 2023 and delivered more than $1.4 billion in dividends to shareholders,” Sainato said.

In a letter To employees late last month, John Deere executives used sterile corporate pitches to explain their rationale for the job cuts, writing that rolling mass layoffs are aimed at “aligning our workforce with our strategic priorities” and “eliminating low- and non-valuable redundancies”. added tasks, activities and expenses.”

A long-time John Deere employee in East Moline, Illinois shared this anonymously The guard that “we are hearing of more layoffs every day, it seems, and this is causing uncertainty everywhere.”

“The only reason for Deere to do this,” the worker added, “is greed.”

UAW Local 838 President Tim Cummings issued a statement last month calling on John Deere to “stop outsourcing and bring these products back to our factories and enable our talented workforce to produce these products at home, where they are used by North American farmers and businesses.”

“Biden needs to let Deere know that they cannot continue to receive taxpayer dollars if they ship taxpayer-funded jobs to Mexico.”

Biden – whose 2024 re-election bid was endorsed by the United Auto Workers, the union representing more than 10,000 John Deere employees in the US – has been outspoken in his criticism of the stock buybacks and has proposed eliminating the current 1% tax on buybacks of shares to quadruple to discourage the practice. The president has also pledged to fight corporate profiteering, which has driven up costs for consumers and hurt workers.

But Leopold, the author of “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It,” wrote in an op-ed Wednesday for Common dreams that Biden should explicitly target John Deere and “fight a big fight” to stop the company from sending American jobs to Mexico.

“The real motivation for Deere to lay off workers and flee to Mexico is to finance a $12.2 billion share buyback,” Leopold argued. “What are stock buybacks? A way to increase the price of the company’s stock – a blatant form of stock manipulation that was illegal until it was deregulated by the Reagan administration.”

Leopold urged Biden to “take a page from the Trump playbook,” citing the former president’s public claims during the 2016 campaign and later in the White House that he would prevent the Indianapolis-based Carrier Air Conditioning would offshore more than a thousand jobs to Mexico. .

Trump’s deal with Carrier did not save all the jobs that were on the chopping block, nor did it deter other Indiana companies from offshoring their operations. But Leopold noted that “Trump’s efforts were extremely popular” — including among those who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election — and could provide lessons for the sitting president.

“Why did Carrier give in?” asked Leopold. “As the president said, ‘I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I also know that about 10% of our revenue comes from the U.S. government.’”

Like Carrier, John Deere is a beneficiary of federal contracts and grants. The company’s website states that it produces “every type of power generation, land-moving, base construction, lawn mowing and people transportation equipment you can imagine” through contracts with the Air Force procurement office, the Defense Logistics Agency and General Services. Administration.

“Biden should let Deere know that they cannot continue to receive taxpayer dollars if they ship taxpayer-funded jobs to Mexico,” Leopold wrote Wednesday. “He could even threaten to use the Defense Production Act to prevent this move. He should pressure them to accept a ‘non-compulsory redundancy’ agreement. If they want to lay off employees, it should be voluntary. The company must provide wages and benefits. It’s clear that Deere has more than enough cash given the amount of money they’re spending on stock buybacks.”

“Come on Joe, go to war for these workers. Put the pressure on John Deere and show the working class that you are tougher than Trump when it comes to saving American jobs,” he added. “Your election and the future of our democracy may depend on it.”